i

I certify that all the material in this study which is not my own work has been identified and
acknowledged, and that no material is included for which a degree has already been conferred
upon me. Signature of the candidate: ii
Writing a dissertation is not just a matter of getting the work done efficiently and with
good input-output ratio, for me it has been much about finding my place in the matrix of
different research traditions and people doing that research. I feel very fortunate to have come
across and made friends with a large number of kind, bright and encouraging people during
my research.
This work would never have been possible without the encouragement and support
from my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quang. I have been extremely lucky to have
him as my mentor and guide in writing this thesis.
I am also indebted to all my lecturers at the University for their precious knowledge,

I. Rationale: 1
II. Aims of the study: 2
III. Scope of the study: 2
IV. Methods of the study: 3
V. Design of the study: 3
Part 2: Development 4
Chapter I. Review of Literature 4
I. 1. What culture? 4
I. 2. What denotations and connotations? x5
I. 3. Denotations and connotations of colours across cultures 9
Chapter II. Denotations and connotations of colours in Vietnamese and English 18
II. 1. Black (en): 19
II. 2. White (trng): 21
II. 3. Blue (xanh da tri): 24
II. 4. Green (xanh lá cây): 27
II. 5. Red (): 29
II. 6. Pink (hng): 31
II. 7. Yellow (vàng): 33
II. 8. Orange (cam): 36
II. 10. Purple (tím): 39
II. 11. Gray (xám): 40 vII. 12. Conclusion: 41
Part 3: Conclusion 42
I. Summary of the study: 42
II. Suggestions for avoidance of culture shock 43


vii
The aims of this study are:
• To focus on denotations and connotations of colours across cultures
• To contrast denotations and connotations of colours in English and Vietnamese
• To raise learners’ awareness of cross-cultural differences in the denotative and
connotative meanings of some basic colours in Vietnamese and English.

For over fifty years, the domain of colour categorization has been used as a testing ground to
investigate the degree to which culture (through language) might influence thought. While it
has been known for many years that different cultures use different sets of linguistic
categories to describe the visible range of colours, many researchers retain the view, first put
forward by Berlin and Kay (1969) that there is a particular set of basic colour categories,
shared between all humans, named in English by basic colour terms and deriving from the
structure of the visual system. These basic categories (named in English as: red, green, blue,
yellow, black, white, grey, pink, orange, purple and brown) are considered distinct from other
terms (for example, turquoise or maroon) because they are known to all members of a
community, not subsumed within another category and generally named with mono-lexemic
words (Kay, Berlin & Merrifield 1991). Therefore, this study will concentrate on the
denotations and connotations of the 11 basic colours as mentioned above in English and in
Vietnamese from a cross-cultural perspective. Due to the limitation of time and knowledge,
however, a deep contrastive analysis between the two languages on the matter may not be
attained. viii


It is stated that “culture refers to the way of life of a group (including, possibly, a society),
including the meanings, the transmission, communication and alteration of those meanings,
and the circuits of power by which the meanings are valorised or derogated “ (Kendall and
Wickham, 2001: 14). While our day-to-day actions and interactions help to contribute and
reproduce cultural norms and assumptions, they are also largely constrained and shaped by
cultural context in which they occur. Thus, culture is a very powerful influence in shaping our
thinking and behaviour.
As its simplest, culture can be defined by Guirdham as shared ways of seeing, thinking and
doing or “a historically transmitted system of symbols, meanings and norms” (Guirdham,
1999:61). There is a natural connection between the language spoken by members of a social
group and that group’s identity. By their accent, their vocabulary, their discourse patterns,
speakers identify themselves and are identified as members of this or that discourse
community. From this membership, they see the importance of using the same language style
as the group they belong to. As a result, words and phrases also help to identify a culture
because when students use dictionaries to find key word fields, at the same time they learn
where the words have come from and how they are used in another culture.
Culture involves at least three components: what people think, what they do, and the material
products they produce. Thus, mental processes, beliefs, knowledge, and values are parts of
culture. Some anthropologists would define culture entirely as mental rules guiding
behaviour, although often wide divergence exists between the acknowledged rules for correct
behaviour and what people actually do. Consequently, some researchers pay most attention to xhuman behaviour and its material products. Culture also has several properties: it is shared,
learned, symbolic, transmitted cross-generationally, adaptive, and integrated.
"A culture is a configuration of learned behaviours and results of behaviour whose
component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society"

For example, both "woman" and "chick" have the denotation "adult female" in North
American society, but "chick" has somewhat negative connotations, while "woman" is
neutral.
For another example of connotations, consider the following:
negative
There are over 2,000 vagrants in the city.
neutral
There are over 2,000 people with no fixed address in the city.
positive
There are over 2,000 homeless in the city.
All three of these expressions refer to exactly the same people, but they will invoke different
associations in the reader's mind: a "vagrant" is a public nuisance while a "homeless" person
is a worthy object of pity and charity. Presumably, someone writing an editorial in support of
a new shelter would use the positive form, while someone writing an editorial in support of
anti-loitering laws would use the negative form.
In this case, the dry legal expression "with no fixed address" quite deliberately avoids most of
the positive or negative associations of the other two terms. A legal specialist will try to avoid
connotative language altogether when writing legislation, often resorting to archaic Latin or
French terms which are not a part of ordinary spoken English, and thus, relatively free of
strong emotional associations.
Many of the most obvious changes in the English language over the past few decades have
had to do with the connotations of words which refer to groups of people. Since the 1950's,
words like "Negro" and "crippled" have acquired strong negative connotations, and have been xiireplaced either by words with neutral connotations (ie "black," "handicapped") or by words
with deliberately positive connotations (ie "African-Canadian," "differently-abled").

connotation. The photographic signifier seems to be virtually identical with its signified, and
the photograph appears to be a 'natural sign' produced without the intervention of a code
(Hall, 1980: 132). Barthes initially argued that only at a level higher than the 'literal' level of
denotation, could a code be identified - that of connotation (we will return to this issue when
we discuss codes). By 1973 Barthes had shifted his ground on this issue. In analysing the
realist literary text Barthes came to the conclusion that 'denotation is not the first meaning, but
pretends to be so; under this illusion, it is ultimately no more than the last of the connotations
(the one which seems both to establish and close the reading), the superior myth by which the
text pretends to return to the nature of language, to language as nature' (Barthes, 1974: 9).
Connotation, in short, produces the illusion of denotation, the illusion of language as
transparent and of the signifier and the signified as being identical. Thus denotation is just
another connotation. From such a perspective denotation can be seen as no more of a 'natural'
meaning than is connotation but rather as a process of naturalization. Such a process leads to
the powerful illusion that denotation is a purely literal and universal meaning which is not at
all ideological, and indeed that those connotations which seem most obvious to individual
interpreters are just as 'natural'. According to an Althusserian reading, when we first learn
denotations, we are also being positioned within ideology by learning dominant connotations
at the same time (Silverman, 1983: 30).
Consequently, whilst theorists may find it analytically useful to distinguish connotation from
denotation, in practice such meanings cannot be neatly separated. Most semioticians argue
that no sign is purely denotative - lacking connotation. Valentin Voloshinov insisted that no
strict division can be made between denotation and connotation because 'referential meaning
is moulded by evaluation meaning is always permeated with value judgement' (Voloshinov,
1973: 105). There can be no neutral, objective description which is free of an evaluative
element. David Mick and Laura Politi note that choosing not to differentiate denotation and
connotation is allied to regarding comprehension and interpretation as similarly inseparable
(Mick & Politi, 1989: 85). xiv


xvsharp contrast raises a question - which theory is correct? Can the theory of colour universals
withstand the critique of new cultural relativists?
In this part, the thesis author will present the Berlin and Kay theory (1969) and developments
to this theory by Kay and McDaniel (1978). She will also look at an opposing view (Saunders
2000) and discuss the issues raised by this critique.
In 1969 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay devised their seminal theory of colour universals that
proved the existence of semantic universals in colour vocabulary. Even more importantly, this
theory also mapped out the evolutionary development of colour terms for all languages
(1969:7). Berlin and Kay collected experimental data from 20 languages using native speakers
of these languages. They extracted the basic colour terms of a language and then mapped
these terms to a chart of fully saturated colour chips (1969: 5).
Berlin and Kay performed two conceptual maneuvers that allowed them to overcome the
problems caused by large variation in the number of colour terms used in different languages
and the seeming irregularity of colour space which a colour term represented (1969). Berlin
and Kay used very strict criteria to define a basic colour term (1969: 9). They also focused
their research on the foci of colours where consensus on a colour term was the highest (1969:
10).
By limiting the field of study with these maneuvers, Berlin and Kay were able to discover a
very limited and universal set of colour terms in all languages that they studied. They found
out that all languages drew their colour terms from a set of only eleven colour categories, and
that the foci of these colour terms were same for all languages (1969: 2). They also found that
all languages acquired their basic colour terms in a fixed sequence of seven evolutionary
stages (1969: 14). If a language encoded a colour, all colours from the previous stages had to
be encoded (1969: 14).
Kay and McDaniel (1978) further developed the original 1969 theory by incorporating the
study of perceptual physiology to explain the universality of basic colour categories. Fuzzy

tests Berlin and Kay performed using fully saturated Munsell colour chips. She (2000) states xviithat the chips are culturally biased and that responses to these chips are crude and cannot be
used as a basis for thesis or to support theories.
Saunders (2000) is clearly leading an attack against basic colour terms. She is a strong
supporter of the relativist view and considers the colour universals as threatening the cultural
diversity of our planet. She bases her strong arguments in the methodological decisions that
Berlin and Kay made when formulating their theory. She tries to find fault in these decisions,
but I am not convinced.
Although Saunders (2000) boasts an impressive list of references, she fails to provide
justification for the key claims she is making. When Saunders (2000) contests the decision to
concentrate on the foci of colour terms, the only researchers she finds to back her claims are
from the same era as the original Berlin and Kay theory. She dismisses the additions made by
Kay and McDaniel (1978), which provide a more recent and logically sound solution in the
form of fuzzy boundaries. Although her other claim of colour chip experiments being crude
has merit. The thesis auhtor do not believe that this crudeness is prohibitive for making
observations. Furthermore, Saunders does not back her other claim of the Munsell colour
chips as being culturally biased in any way.
The Berlin and Kay theory has endured for more than 30 years in the scientific community. It
has been adopted in linguistics and in colour category research, even Saunders (2000)
acknowledges this. I do not believe that the theory of colour universals has endured only
because of the fraternal spirit of mutual embrace in the scientific community as Saunders
(2000) bitterly claims. The theory of basic colour terms is on solid ground and latest research
has not refuted its stance, rather refined the original idea and gained new insight on the
mechanisms underlying our colour perception. Saunders seems a cultural relativist who
wishes to keep universality at an arm's length. She does not, however, make a compelling case

Similarly, yellow is thought of as a warm colour, for people associate yellow with the sun.
And perhaps only one natural point of reference of the sun which relates to yellow is the fact xixthat in children’s drawings and paintings, the sun is painted yellow. And perhaps in reality the
colour of the sun is not as yellow as that in children’s paintings. Therefore, in most
dictionaries, yellow is defined differently (see below).
In a word, a part from the fact every colour term can be identified in terms of physical
properties of light such as wavelength or relative energy, we focus on things in our
environment such as: the sea, fire, plant, etc. through which be recognized. As a result, the
main meanings of Black, White, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow can be recognized as follows:
- Black: of the colour of coal or pitch
- White: having the colour of pure snow or milk
- Blue: having the colour of the clear sky or the deep sea
- Green: of the colour that is characteristic of growing grass
- Red: of the colour of blood or fire
- Yellow: of the colour of ripe lemons, egg yolks or gold
From the dissimilarities in the way different countries cut up the “continuum of colour”, let
us consider whether there are any differences in their recognition of the significance of
colours.
Damen (1987) made statistics on colour associations that a group of foreign students studying
English in the Untied States reported as generally shared in their countries or cultures.
Country
Colour
Japanese Latin
American
Saudi Arabian Chinese

happiness, good
things
Yellow
foolishness,
unripe, pitiful
New Year’s
Eve
envy
Lack of response ( ) indicates that the students surveyed did not respond. It does not mean
that yellow has no significance in China.
According to Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992), in English
speaking countries, black is traditionally thought of as suggesting sadness, evil, death and
mourning. People often wear black clothes to show their grief at funerals and the hearse is
black too. Members of the armed forces usually wear black on the occasion of a royal death.
However, it is now very rare for people to wear balck for long periods as a sign of mourning.
The black raven is also associated with death. The Devil is often shown in pictures dressed in
black.
Opposite to black is white. White is usually thought of as the colour of purity and virginity.
Therefore, babies are usually dressed in white at christening and brides usually white dressed
at weddings that take place in church.
Blue is often thought of as a male colour. Boy babies are sometimes given blue clothes (and
girl babies, pink).
Green signals are used to indicate that there is no danger, or that a person or vehicle may
proceed. xxiYellow is associated with cowardice. Hence, yellow belly means a contemptible coward.

Dried peas, for instance, are green in colour, but they would be referred to as green peas
because green is often used of unripe fruit. Therefore, we can say these blackberries are
green while they are in red colour. Similarly, white is brown when relating to coffee, yellow
when referring to wine and pink as applied to people. This mat seem old, but this is reality of
language. This brings us no less interest but sometimes trouble. Besides, we should not ignore
the influence of cultural and psychological aspects upon the linguistic system, especially upon
words denoting colour. These aspects together with the long history of using language have
affected word meaning. And we believe that the semantic structures of words denoting colour
will be enriched more and more. This contributes to the development of our abundant
resource of language.xxiii$
&
Colour has symbolic meanings that are reinforced through social rules. For example, the
colour red means stop while the green and yellow mean go and caution respectively. Some
lesser uniform symbolism of colour derives from culture and religion. For example, in most
Western cultures the colour black is used to denote evil or contamination. Eastern cultures
however embrace the colour black as being lucky or prosperous. Likewise, brides in Western
cultures wear the colour white as a symbol of purity. In Chinese culture the colour red has a
deep and powerful meaning and is used throughout wedding celebrations. Red in that culture
is the symbol of happiness and ultimate joy, thus all Chinese weddings include the colour red.
English find many meaningful definition for colours used in wedding but Vietnamese don’t.
English consider that:
Married in white, you have it right
Married in blue, your love is true
Married in pink, your fortune will sink

In a different way, black also represents space, specifically outer space and infinite space.
There is also a mystery to things that can not be defined, or seen, and the colour black often
accentuates anything with those mysterious or indefinable qualities.
Black is sometimes worn as a symbol of authority, like with court judges and their long black
robes. Referees of many sports wear black as well, or a combination of black and white or
black and yellow.
In addition, having a black belt in almost any martial art shows expertise at a high level, if not
the very highest level possible.
More often than not, however, black is used to reference things that are bad. “The black
market” is one such term which describes stolen goods sold at reduced prices. xxvBlackmail also uses the word “black” just for it’s negative qualities, and there are many more
occurrences as well. The bubonic plague, for instance—responsible for millions of deaths
during the middle ages in Europe—was known as the Black Death or Black Plague.
Good black
(Legends: the symbol “•” = only in English; the symbol “” = both in English and
Vietnamese)
• Black tie - formal (as in formal party attire)
• Blackwash - bring things out in the open
• In the black - having money, doing well in business
• Men in black - government agents
 Black box - equipment or apparatus: hp en
 Pitch black - dark as night, very black: en ngòm
 In black and white - in writing or in print: giy trng mc en
 Black belt - expert (especially in martial arts): ai en
Black in Vietnamese also has other positive meanings such as in en giòn (attractively